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DIY Advent calendar for your loved ones

Christmas is around the corner, only one month to go and to make the wait a little bit sweeter an advent calendar is the best way to surprise your loved ones.
In recent years I have made several advent calendars by myself and with this post I want to share some ideas with what you could fill yours and how to make an advent calendar.

It starts with the filling:

First thing you should make up your mind about is what your advent calendar will be fille with. Will you put mainly sweets in there or do you prefer to make a calendar full of vouchers, or will you put some useful items in there?
Make up your mind because you need to make sure your items will fit into the packaging you are going to use.

Usually I put chocolate in the calendar with special vouchers or a small item on every sunday. This year I wanted to leave out the calories and therefore the whole calendar is filled with fun items. Here’s what’s in this year’s calendar:

Sexy Coupons, because cold days should turn into hot nights

Nosestrips for blackheads removal, because men can also use some cosmetic

Lipbalm, for softer lips during winter

Kaleidoscope, for the office to relax

100 things a dad should do, for some fun activities

Car scent

Anti-stress sand for the office

Vouchers, e.g. for a day at the sauna together, for the cinema, for a dinner, anything that would make him happy

Silver Reindeer ornament, we have a thing with reindeers

Picture holder for the office, ideally you include a picture. I put a picture of our son

Pocket deo, for after the sports to put in his duffle bag

Golden ornaments for the Christmas tree, I put 3 for every member of the family: Father, mother, son

Tiger balm, for his bruises after sport. It is also great against colds!

Massage candle

Beard oil

Some lots, maybe he’ll win something

Lavender oil, is great to calm down. Something everyone should have at the office to sniff when stressed

A mug for the office with a funny quote from one of our favorite Comedians, Eddie Izzard

Hairwachs with coconut scent, for after sports of to keep at the office

As you see, I thought about gifts for three main occasions:

Office

Sport

Home

If you try to categorize your gifts you might come up with your own personalized ideas. It helped me to get inspired and search for specific items that way.

Some additional filling ideas:

Calendar, could be for the table, or a Moleskine

A nice pen for the office

USB stick

Keychain

Scented candles

Magic towel

Voucher for Amazon, iTunes

Frame for picture

Mini perfume

Wallet

Hand sanitizer

You can find anything from cheap to expensive, no limits to your creativity.

Pack it up:

Once you got all or almost all your items together, there are plenty of cool ways to package them. Again, there are no limits to your creativity.

What I did in recent years was to print on plain white paper the numbers in black and white, Some of them had a pattern, some I just left as they were. I packed the items and by adding a red ribbon, it immediately got this modern Christmas look:

Then you can also easily DIY paper bags from any wrapping paper you want to use. I also had some cardboard boxes left and I simply made a little pattern with a sharpie on it (stars, stripes or dots). For the vouchers I took some black envelopes which I bought on the internet. If you get a jute yarn you can hang up your calendar once it’s finnished. This way it will also funciton as a little Christmas decoration.

And this year I got inspired by these festive clips:

These were the base of this year’s calendar. I went out and looked for anything that would match them and I got home with this:

And then, after a couple of hours…

I hope you got some inspiration on how to make your own personalized advent calendar for you significant other.